"Celebrations of the simplest events in life," is how photographer Kathryn Abbe describes the wealth of images she has captured in a career spanning over seventy years.

Born in Brooklyn in 1919, Kathryn grew up in Wallingford, Connecticut with her twin sister Frances, who also became a professional photographer. When Kathryn moved back to Brooklyn in the late 1930s, she studied painting with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at The New School and earned a BFA degree in art and design at Pratt Institute. During her second year at Pratt, she enrolled in an elective class in photography, which proved to be decisive. "I walked into the studio and that was it," Kathryn recalled. "Discovering the camera as a tool for artistic expression came naturally to me. When I took my first photograph, I instantly became hooked."

Since the 1940s, her photographs have been reproduced in over eighty books and periodicals, both in the U.S. and abroad. She has more than twenty major magazine covers to her credit—a rare achievement for a female photographer of her time. She has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world and her photographs are in the permanent collections of, among others, the Brooklyn Museum, Akron Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A co-author of three books, Kathryn has lectured extensively and appeared on many television programs.

Kathryn often cites photographers Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Man Ray (1896-1976) as well as painters of the surrealist movement as major influences. “My work is a combination of rough planning and the intuition necessary to include spontaneity to the result," she says. "My aim is to bring emotion to my photographs, whether humorous, touching, sad or searching. Many of my photographs are of events that just happen. I am compelled to record images that might disappear. My photographs enable me to preserve the memory of a certain person, place, or moment in time.”

The exhibition at Gallery Tosei incorporates the many moods of this multi-faceted artist. The photographs in this exhibit include portraits of painters and artists, post-war fashion photography, street scenes, landscapes and portraits of ordinary people.
- Chris Karitevlis

*image (left)
© Kathryn Abbe 
Courtesy of Gallery Tosei